Lisbon, Portugal’s Miss Lava are the kind of stoner rock band that could only survive in Europe. They ooze with a blatant and un-contradictory stoner rock commercialism that’s completely antithetical to the American scene, and like a lot of European bands of their ilk – Spiritual Beggars comes to mind as a primary comparison point – they make it work. They play dirty, sweaty rock and roll, but they do it with clean, crisp production and tight pop songwriting. When US bands try this stuff, it either doesn’t work or turns into douche rock, which isn’t good for anyone involved.

On Miss Lava’s full-length debut, the perhaps referentially-titled Blues for the Dangerous Miles (Raging Planet), the four-piece present 11 tracks mostly in the three and a half to five minute range, centered around solid structures of verses, choruses and so forth. The riffing of guitarist K. Raffah is central to the songs, but I wouldn’t call Blues for the Dangerous Miles guitar-led. Bassist Samuel Rebelo, drummer J. Garcia and vocalist Johnny Lee know where they’re supposed to be at any given time, so it’s not like the guitars need to start the song and everyone picks up from there. Miss Lava are tighter than that. They’ve worked out those kinks.

Most of the recording was done by Rebelo, or at least involved him in some way (apart from the vocals), and Miss Lava sent the record to metal titan Jens Bogren (Opeth, Amon Amarth, Katatonia, etc.) at Fascination Street Studios for mixing and mastering. You can hear some of that modern metal sheen in Raffah’s guitar on cuts like “Blind Dog” or the opener “Don’t Tell a Soul,” but in the context of the band’s approach, it works. Ditto for Lee’s vocals, which make tracks like “Shine On” and the slower “The Wait” highlights of Blues for the Dangerous Miles, but would probably be grating in another band situation. In Miss Lava, they seem to swagger just right; their multiple-layer arrangements only adding to the pop sensibilities of the band.

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For those who weren’t able to make it either for fiscal or volcanic reasons, the first audio streams from this year’s Roadburn are online now. If you’re still reading and haven’t yet clicked that link, here it is again. Go on, then.

The first batch features YOB, Brant Bjork, Horisont, Trinacria, Nachtmystium, Firebird, Earthless and more to choose from, so you know, life is pretty awesome. I’ve got the YOB one on now and it rules as you’d expect.

Here’s what fest-organizer Walter had to say about it and a poster of why I want to make it through the next year:

Finally, the volcanic dust has (almost) settled! For everyone no longer fighting short term memory loss and extreme fatigue caused by sleep deprivation and sensory overload, get ready to relive the highlights of Roadburn Festival 2010.

For everyone who could not make it due to the mighty Eyjafjallajokull eruption, now is your time to enjoy the festival without any hassles. And for everyone who could not magically clone ourselves to simultaneously catch all of the action in the Bat Cave, Green Room, Midi Theatre and Main Hall and felt kind of bummed about it, cheer up!

We are pleased to announce that VPRO 3voor12, which is the leading cultural media network in the Netherlands, has posted additional on-demand audio streams for your Roadburn 2010 listening pleasure.

You know, some bands, you expect when you haven’t checked in on them for a while they’ve maybe got some news that they’re touring or thinking about starting to put out a new album, maybe have some ideas for songs, all very nebulous, not yet willing to reveal titles, etc. Baltimore, Maryland’s Against Nature, meanwhile, have released two albums and have a third and fourth on the way. In about six months. And that’s not even counting their super-doomed alter ego, Revelation, who also put out a record in that time. They should call the next album Prolific Bloody Prolific.

In January, Against Nature self-released Drawing Arrows through their own Bland Hand Records, and a mere month later (presumably from the same sessions; though I don’t know that for sure) came Chasing Eagles, the band’s 13^th or 14^th release, which continues their seemingly overflowing run of ‘70s-style prog played at three-quarter speed and as unpretentiously as possible. Guitarist/vocalist John Brenner is as much at home with this material as I am on the couch, and whether it’s the bluesy “A Likely Story” or the more Sabbath-fueled “Snowed Under,” bassist Bert Hall, Jr. and drummer Steve Branagan have no trouble laying a solid foundation for the songs to build on.

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…And bless their hearts for that. I think more bands need to do live videos. I wholly support the motion currently on the floor. Make it so. Do it up. Fucking a — and other such generic votes of approval. Here’s Black Pyramid doing “Mirror Messiah” from last year’s Black Pyramid album, taped live:

It has been an evident conscious decision by the band Zoroaster that each of their albums should sound different from the one before it. They are, in terms often heard, “trying something different” each time. Certainly 2009’s Voice of Saturn showed marked growth from 2007’s Dog Magic, and their third and latest full-length, Matador, follows the same ethic, pushing the Atlanta trio’s psychedelic doom in yet another surprisingly complex direction.

Matador is Zoroaster’s first album for E1 Music (High on Fire, In Flames, Hatebreed), the first album they aren’t releasing through their own Terminal Doom Records, but I don’t think that accounts for any of the sonic changes the band has undergone. One might expect that, having moved from an entirely independent method of operation to a label of reach as considerable as E1’s, Zoroaster would come across, either consciously or unconsciously, as more commercial, but that’s not – repeat, not – what’s happening on Matador. Rather, it seems guitarist/vocalist Will Fiore, bassist/vocalist Brent Anderson and drummer Dan Scanlan have gone even further out than ever before, incorporating a mutated brand of desert rock riffing into their arsenal while at the same time meshing it with increased use of highly-reverbed and delayed clean vocals that makes a song like opener “D.N.R.” sound spacious even more than what is commonly thought of in doom as heavy. The feel is that Zoroaster have moved beyond the confines of genre, and with the help of producer Sanford Parker, are working on their own progressive definition thereof.

There are also a lot more songs on Matador than in the past. With their third outing, Zoroaster gives us nine full-tracks, where Dog Magic had six and Voice of Saturn had five if you discount the intro and outro (which, in the case of the latter, also takes 14 minutes of runtime off the album and may not be an entirely fair move). Of course, the track lengths here are shorter, with cuts like the heavily rhythmic “Ancient Ones,” “Trident,” “Black Hole” and “Odyssey II” all under four minutes and only “Old World” and closer “Matador” over seven, but if bursts of rocking energy like “Trident,” with Fiore’s righteous and classically-styled soloing, are going to be the tradeoff, I’ll take it, as Zoroaster prove more than capable of handling the style. “Trident” is a surprisingly catchy highlight, tighter with more aggressive vocals, than “Odyssey” before it, but it really is the soloing that sets the song apart. It’s yet another move Zoroaster have made to distinguish Matador from its predecessors.

So naturally, on the next track, which is “Firewater,” they go in the complete opposite direction. The song is 4:14 of noise, feedback, soloing, effects and a Clutch-style bass and drum groove underneath, basically Scanlan and Anderson giving Fiore a little freak-out time. Gone is the structure, the memorable hook, the fleetness of finger (well, I guess that’s still there, but coming from another dimension). Take that, expectation.

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Impulse usually plays a very small part in my CD purchasing, and even less so for buying online. Whether it’s eBay, Amazon, All that is Heavy or what, the final click may be on a whim, but I’ve usually sat and sweated over the decision of whether or not I actually want to buy this thing for at least a day or two.

Not so for the copy of Church of Misery‘s Early Works Compilation that I recently stumbled upon and snagged off eBay. The auction had been set to end in an hour when I found it and it was only at something like eight bucks at the time, and I was bored, so I watched it until there was less than a minute, then put in my bid and got it for about $11 before the shipping. It’s the original Leaf Hound Records version, and even with four dollars shipping from Britain, that’s not a terrible deal, but the purchase was ultimately pointless.

Here’s why: Early Works Compilation was just reissued. Weeks ago — maybe even three — by Emetic Records out of Michigan. I know Leaf Hound is probably defunct, and that’s the kind of thing I usually get off on, but what the hell? I could have just gotten the reissue on the cheap and probably filled a shopping cart with other goodies and had a great time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I got the record, but it just feels a little silly. It’s like hunting down the Man’s Ruin version of Goatsnake‘s Flower of Disease when the one on Southern Lord is exactly the same (no, I did not do this; but I probably would if I didn’t already have the original of that album). Ridiculous.

I take solace in the fact that the dude I bought Early Works Compilation off of plays in The Heads. That’s kind of cool. Like when I bought the Orange Goblin/Electric Wizard split off Mike Scheidt from YOB, also on eBay. Maybe if I keep that in mind I’ll have an easier time accepting the outright dopeyness of the “grab it!” impulse and feel a little better about the whole thing. Maybe not. Whatever. At least I won something. There’s always that sense of accomplishment when eBay‘s form letters are so happy for you. Really makes you feel the achievement. I’m gonna try reveling in that for a while and see how it goes; maybe put on some Church of Misery to accompany.

It’s only appropriate to end this week with Dio. I chose a clip for the song “I” from Black Sabbath‘s Dehumanizer tour, probably 1992 or somewhere thereabouts. Great song, and one I didn’t include in the Dio-cast, and not a bad video in that classic bootleggy kind of way, so enjoy and remember.

At least we have good music, right? When all else fails, at least there’s that.

Wherever you are, if the libations and timing are appropriate tonight, raise a toast to Ronnie James Dio, and please be safe. We’ll see you back here next week.

I just finished watching the new DVD in the Classic Albums series (if you get VH1 Classic, chances are you’ve seen or scrolled past it on your program guide), which is essentially a documentary about Black Sabbath‘s Paranoid put out by Eagle Vision with interviews from all four original members of the band and input from critics, Roger Bain, who produced, and, I guess just because he likes the record, Henry Rollins, who I think might have more face-time on the disc than Geezer Butler. If not, it’s pretty close.

Let’s try and put the junk-strokery of Paranoid aside (all praise be upon it), if for no other reason than I have nothing to add to the already generations-long line of lauding it has received — Black Sabbath are the best band ever and we all know it. The simple truth is there wasn’t much of a story to how Paranoid was made. Sabbath were starting to get popular and they needed to put out a new album to capitalize on that burgeoning popularity, so they just so happened to release Paranoid (not my favorite of their albums, but godly nonetheless), and well, you know the rest. “Hand of Doom,” “Electric Funeral,” “Fairies Wear Boots,” “Iron Man,” “Planet Caravan,” “War Pigs” — these songs are essentially the foundation upon which the ensuing 40 years of heavy music have been built. Like I said, best ever.

As far as the DVD goes, it’s interesting to hear the members, who all appear in separate interviews, talking about how they came up with the material, but what it boils down to is, “Tony Iommi wrote an amazing riff and we turned it into a song.” That’s apparently how it went. Not quite as action-packed as Deep Purple‘s Classic Albums installment for Machine Head, which had burning buildings, band members climbing out of windows and recording in hallways, but of course the circumstances were different, and if I had to choose between the two records, well fuck it, Machine Head wouldn’t stand a chance.

But the mundane circumstances that may have birthed it aside — drugs, working class misery, an already well-documented partially-severed finger — Paranoid is still about as close as humans can come to divinity, so for that, it’s well worth seeing the Classic Albums DVD. There’s some archival performance footage and the song-by-song format really lets Iommi, Geezer, Ozzy and Bill Ward get in-depth about the tracks; a fair tradeoff for seeing people like the dude who edits Mojo and Kerrang! talk about how much the record rules, which presumably you already know if you’re watching.

And yeah, there is a lot of Rollins. He likes him some Sabbath, and though it might have been interesting to hear from some other musicians, maybe who were in later incarnations of Black Sabbath either in the Dio years or after, I guess Rollins picked up the phone when they called, so there you go.

All told, it’s probably not much Sab-obsessives didn’t already know, but if being sick of heaping acclaim onto Paranoid is something that can happen to a person, I certainly wouldn’t know about it. And you do get to see Tony Iommi play the opening of “Fairies Wear Boots” on solo guitar, and that pretty much rules, so no complaints. I’ll probably only watch it 700 more times.

Black Sabbath’s Website

Eagle Vision